To open up the DO menu, first open Settings on your phone and scroll all the way down to the System header at the bottom. Tap About Phone and find the Build Number entry. Tap it several times until you see a little message that says “You are now a developer!” Once this is done, you’ll find a new Developer Options menu entry close to where About Phone was.

1. Stay Awake

With this option enabled, your phone’s screen won’t ever turn off when it’s plugged into a charger. For developers, this is useful so you can keep an eye on your app over long periods of time, but you can also take advantage of it.

Running Services lets you view how much RAM apps are using, as well as currently running apps on your phone. Don’t be too stressed out by anything here; Android does a fantastic job at managing RAM, so you don’t need to intervene.

It’s certainly a useful tool, but for security9 Ways to Protect Your Privacy on Android9 Ways to Protect Your Privacy on AndroidAndroid offers various privacy-friendly features, but Google doesn't always make it clear how we should use them. Let us take you through some of the best ways to protect data on your Android.Read More, the wise option is to enable this only when you need it, and turn it off afterwards. As a safety feature, Android requires you to manually approve all connections to new PCs. However, this wouldn’t prevent someone who stole your phone from using USB debugging to mess with it.

This is not recommended for those on a limited data plan, but if you experience issues with your phone taking a long time to switch between Wi-Fi and data, it might be worth a try.

7. Disable Absolute Volume

Here’s an interesting case of a setting that came directly out of user feedback. Some Bluetooth speakers or devices might have issues working with Android’s volume control. Normally, changing the volume on your phone should change the volume of the Bluetooth device. Some devices don’t work with this feature, or have the volume become extremely quiet or super loud.

If you’ve experienced this problem with your devices, try enabling this setting. Otherwise, you should leave it turned off for normal functionality.

Having these circles is also useful if you’re creating a video, as viewers will be able to see exactly where you’re touching.

9. Animation Scales

Depending on how fast your phone is, you might not notice them, but Android plays animations when opening or switching between apps. Using the Window animation scale, Transition animation scale, and Animator duration scale, you can adjust how long these transitions take.

Note that depending on how speedy your device is, these animations might act to mask some hidden loading times when switching between apps, so it might be best to leave them alone if your phone seems sluggish.

Task killers destroy processes running in the background — processes that Android is using to make sure you can switch back to other apps quickly. This ends up forcing your phone to do more work stopping and starting the process than it would if you had just left it alone.

Don’t enable this setting unless you really want to experience the awful performance this brings for a few minutes!

Developer for a Day

There are plenty of other settings in the Developer Options, but most of them don’t have any use for those who aren’t developing Android apps. It’s awesome that Google provides these tools for developers who would otherwise have to jump through a lot of hoops to re-create certain conditions. Neatly, many of the settings still have use for the average user, as we’ve seen.

Hello,
I'm hoping you can educate me on how to properly use usb debugging, and get a better understanding on what developer options would benefit me and how to execute them properly. I'm concerned with the security of my phone. I'm worried that someone has put Spyware on my phone, if i used my computer for the usb debugging option would it detect anything? Also I really want to know what apps are factory and are sapose to be on my phone, because Spyware uses fake names to fool people.
My battery dies more than once a day and on battery monitoring things it says that I have videos running like 9 hours in a row as well as audio recording.
Please help me ?

Is your phone rooted? Do you download apps from anywhere outside of Google Play? If neither of those are true, I doubt that your phone is infected. If Malwarebytes doesn't find anything, I would suggest a factory reset of your phone to be sure. Have you reviewed your apps list for anything suspect?

Ben is a Deputy Editor and the Sponsored Post Manager at MakeUseOf. He holds a B.S. in Computer Information Systems from Grove City College, where he graduated Cum Laude and with Honors in his major. He enjoys helping others and is passionate about video games as a medium.